Installation of MS C# Visual Express fails mysteriously - visual-studio

I hate to resort to dumping problems on other people, and I'm sure this is a stupid problem that can be easily fixed, but it's really getting to annoy me and I can't figure it out.
Well I tried installing Microsoft C# Visual Express, but after a few minutes into the installation I got a "Windows Module Installer stopped working..." error. It said the program "stopped working and was closed," but it appeared to stay up. I restarted Vista, and although Windows Module Installer is gone, the same exact error pops up every couple of minutes or so.
Tried all the fancy ways to restart the service, still no luck.
The installation involved Microsoft .NET Framework v3.5, which Vista has been trying to update for a while now (with no attempts successful). Maybe this could be part of the problem? I searched it up on the Internet, and some related issues were caused by the ".NET Framework being corrupted." The solutions mostly involved re-installing the Framework, but that's just the problem - I can't re-install it.
In short:
1) Several failed automatic updates
a) Microsoft .NET Framework
b) Solutions require re-installation of the Framework
2) Attempted to download/install a new copy of .NET Framework
a) Download goes seamlessly, installation fails (no explanation given)
3) Attempted to install Microsoft C# Visual Express
a) Software requires .NET Framework
b) .NET Framework automatically included in installation
c) Download fails, error message appears with no explanation.
d) Windows Module Installer stays open, with no way to exit.
4) Computer restarted/rebooted
a) Windows Module Installer is gone
b) Error messages still appear (And reappear when closed out), although the software isn't there anymore.
This has been really confusing for me. Heh, I just want my computer back to the way it was before I even tried installing C# Visual Express now...
Any help is MUCH appreciated. Thanks in advance.
(also, sorry for the messy formatting... This is my first time using this site.)

Have you checked the Windows update log files for any relevant error messages? Look in your Windows folder for "WindowsUpdate.log" or Windows Update.log".
Also the VS Express installer might leave a log file, possibly in your %TMP% folder. (Or they might be a command line option to create a log file, try calling the installer with /?)

You may want to run a diagnostic on your system memory, sometimes strange application behavior can be traced to a bad dimm.
There's such a diagnostic tool included with the Ubuntu live cds. You can access it through the menu after the cd boots, and it takes around 30-60 mins to run. There are probably some faster ones out there though.

SOLUTION:
1) Run the Windows Configuration Utility
2) Go to the "Startup" tab
3) Make sure "Windows Module Installer" is UNCHECKED
4) Restart

Related

Can't install Visual Studio - stuck on Visual Studio Hub Services

Now I have some big problems with installing Visual Studio Community.
These problems came when I got back to Windows 7 from Win10 (because I had some problems).
When I launched the actual Visual Studio for the first time on Win7, it loaded good, but I didn't have any templates. So I decided to reinstall it.
Uninstall went good, but when I tried to install it again, it just stopped at Microsoft Visual Studio Hub Services or something like that. It just really stopped, when I let it go, the progress bar never moved. Then it also said that it couldn't find it or something similar.
And then the fun starts. I tried to do it several times, same. Then I downloaded the Visual Studio 2013 Community, and it stopped on Build x86. Same like the Hub Services at the 2015 version. I gave up at this moment. But after that, I went angry and removed the all Visual Studio folders in the Program Files.
But later on, I found the Visual Studio 2015 Express for Desktop, I downloaded it and that time it said right at the beginning: A Prerelease version of Visual Studio Community is currently installed. Please uninstall it prior to proceeding with your current installation.
I listened to it, went to Remove and Add Programs thing (don't know what name is it in english) and yeah, there was a version of that Visual Studio I removed. I tried to uninstall it, but it just said something again: The installation source for this product is not available. Make sure that the source exists and that you can access it.. And that's basically all.
So I would like to ask, how to fix this thing. It's because of that movement from Win10 to Win7? Or because of the VS folder deletement in Program Files? Any answers are very welcome!
EDIT: Main problem is that it stops at Microsoft Visual Studio Hub Services, I managed to uninstall the 2015 Community version, but then it stops and just didn't move, the only way was to remove the process to shut down the installing window and cancel the installing.
EDIT 2: Well, kinda shy of my grammar back then, fixed some bigger mistakes.
When Visual studio is installed, several other programs get installed. So when you try to uninstall visual studio, you should uninstall all other bunch of programs which were installed along with actual visual studio(which is a bit burden). It take so much time for me to uninstall all the programs from my computer. So while re installing please make sure you uninstall all the other installed apps also.
[EDIT: you may want to scroll to the bottom for the nuclear option which I wish I'd discovered earlier!]
I've downgraded two computers from Windows 10 to 7, both with VS2015 on them. One worked and the other had its VS2015 break horribly. I also deleted the VS2015 directory and registry data that mentioned VS2015 and all sorts, and I had even more problems than you describe :) I think the difference is that I installed some new things (node.js and TypeScript) under Windows 10, and they inserted things into VS2015 which were no longer properly installed after the downgrade.
Here are my discoveries in a hopefully useful order:
When it hangs, what it's actually doing is trying to display this prompt asking you to supply the path to an installer it couldn't find.
You usually get to see these prompts if you 'Run as Administrator' the (main) installer (rather than letting it obtain Administrator privileges itself). Process Explorer helps shed light on this: if the main installer's window is associated with the child process, then the dialogues are visible. If the root process, they're not.
The prompt relates to old versions of packages that the installer wants to uninstall prior to installing a new one, and for some reason the installer doesn't know how to re-download those packages. It is usually looking under C:\ProgramData\Package Cache for them.
If you aren't seeing the dialogue, you can view logs in C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Local\Temp. Use the 'Details' view and sort this folder by date modified, to help you find the right one. Each sub-installer tends to make a new file so you may have to poke around a bit. Changing dates or file sizes also tell you that it's doing something.
Messages like this tend to be associated with the attempt to show a dialogue:
MSI (s) (24:D8) [13:00:25:033]: SOURCEMGMT: Trying source C:\ProgramData\Package Cache\{388D7468-1CCA-40C8-9F08-4C20E972E922}v14.0.25123\packages\BuildTools_MSBuildResMsi_amd64\.
MSI (s) (24:D8) [13:00:25:033]: Note: 1: 2203 2: C:\ProgramData\Package Cache\{388D7468-1CCA-40C8-9F08-4C20E972E922}v14.0.25123\packages\BuildTools_MSBuildResMsi_amd64\BuildTools_MSBuildResMsi.msi 3: -2147287037
MSI (s) (24:D8) [13:00:25:033]: SOURCEMGMT: Source is invalid due to missing/inaccessible package.
So, what to do about these missing packages?
If you have another computer with a working Visual Studio 2015 installation, you can copy the entirety of Package Cache from there to your bad computer (no need to merge folders that already exist) and that will hopefully catch many of them.
For the rest, I tried a few third-party uninstallers, and Revo Uninstaller helped. Go into its settings and enable 'Show System Components'. Then, whenever you identify a problematic package, you'll usually be able to find it in Revo Uninstaller. If you uninstall it, you'll see the usual prompt (cancel it), and after it fails, Revo's 'Moderate' registry cleanup option does the trick ('Safe' didn't). If you use the Pro version then you can multi-select and use the 'Quick Uninstall' batch option, which isn't quite automated - yes, I'm afraid it will be tedious - but with some patience, you can get through everything.
Identifying the problematic packages is still a manual process, but the good news is that you can cancel many of the prompts during a run of the installer without it aborting, so you can collect a lot of package names as you go. You can also look for patterns in version numbers; for me, a lot of them were 14.0.15123` or something like that.
For me, just one package didn't show up in Revo Uninstaller, and I searched the registry myself and deleted some occurrences. I'm not sure if that or the subsequent install of the new package was what did it, but even that one went away.
So, after all that, I'm pleased to report that Visual Studio 2015 has got through the 'Repair' operation with no further errors. I still need to reboot before I can see if it runs without a hitch...
[EDIT: Nuclear option follows]
It didn't. Many of the standard windows (code editor and error list to name a couple) failed to load with the error "An item with the same key has already been added". On the plus side, at least Visual Studio didn't suddenly exit moments after opening. So that's an improvement and 2-3 days well spent :)
After that:
I found this answer and tried the TotalUninstaller linked therein.
Then I deleted more of the installation where that uninstaller reported it couldn't delete a non-empty directory.
Then I was going to reinstall from scratch, but would you believe it - it gave me Modify/Repair/Uninstall options! So I ran the Uninstall. (Maybe Repair would have worked, who knows?)
Then I reinstalled from scratch.
There was just one more failed uninstall of an old thing (Microsoft Web Deploy), but it didn't even report a warning at the end because of it, and now my Visual Studio finally seems to be intact - fingers crossed! (I may never test that web deploy thing anyway - I mainly use it with Unity. Of course I had to install the Unity tools again.)
So yeah. I have no idea if this works by itself or if you also have to do all the other stuff. If you try it and find out, let us know.
Since you are still seeing Visual Studio in Remove and Add Programs, your environment may not be entirely clean and you will have to first completely remove Visual Studio from the system. This should be independent of whether you're using Windows 7 or 10.
You may need to do further research, but here are some initial pointers:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/Aa983433(v=VS.90).aspx
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/mats/program_install_and_uninstall
Beyond trying those things and then re-attempting the install, please look for any logs generated from the failures. For example, in your %temp% folder.
In my case , I just restart the PC and after it boots up the VISUAL STUDIO 2015 will automatic come back and keep running. I did it with 2 PCs of users and with version Professional. Hope this helps.
Note : Please make sure to close all VS running on your PC before running install 2015 (in my case is VS Pro 2013) and make sure Windows updates have finished running (if they have).
Uninstall any version of visual studio 2015 you already might have installed.
Then, delete this key: I had a similiar issue and found finally as cause entries under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\DevDiv\vs\Servicing\14.0. .

Visual Basic Studio 2010 does not start

I've got trouble with my copy of Microsoft Visual Basic 2010 Express.
I installed it about a year ago. Since then I've used it several times without any problems. Now, I haven't used it for some weeks and now, when I try to start the application, it crashes after the welcome-screen with a not-helpful message. Because I use the german version of Visual Studio, I don't know exactly, how this message would look like in english:
German: Ein Aufrufziel hat einen Ausnahmefehler verursacht.
English (freely translated): A called target has caused an exception.
So, as you see, this Error Screen does not give many information. It is also not possible to gather more information. After clicking OK to the error, the application simply shuts down.
Some details
I am using the german installation of MS Visual Basic 2010 Express
I've got also installed the german version of MS Visual C++ 2010 Express (does not work as well)
Both applications does not work with user permissions nor with administrator permissions
No possible Compatibility-Option (Compatibility Mode, Reduced Color Mode, etc) fix the problem
I work inside a physical Windows 8.1 machine
I installed all updates, that came with the automated update feature of windows
I've got another copy of MS Studio Express inside a VM (Windows 7), working properly
I do not remember exactly what I have changed since my last use of VS, I think I installed Far Cry 4 AFTER my last use, wich came with some .NET components. But I don't think there were other big changes inside the system.
Because the error message is so inconcrete, I do not know, wich further information can be useful, nor I can imagine any problem, that suddenly occured. So I hope somebody got a similar problem and knows how to fix it.
The best option is to go for visual studio community 2013.It's free and you can recover your previous work.
You can download it here.
[http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=517284][1]
Even if you find an error go to build->clean solution.It will work like wonder.
thanks
N S Deo

CODE IS NOT RUNNING - VS 2013 (not telerik issue)

I am using VS 2013 Ultimate and MVC5. When i run the debugger I get this message:
/***********************************************/
Code is not running
The current thread is not currently running code or the call stack could not be obtained.
/**************************************************/
The problem happens also when i run other type of projects that do not use IIS (such as VSTO). So the IISExpress fix will not work here.
I looked around and found a few similar problems that pointed at removing JustMock extension by telerik. However, i do not have this extension installed.
It was enough for me to just restart Visual Studio 2013 to get debugging working again.
This solution is a little tangential. But:
I started getting this bug on VS2012. Per recommendations elsewhere on the net, I removed all recent Windows Updates. No help.
I was aware that anti-virus programs on Windows probably monitor inter-process communication.
So then I told Kaspersky to explicitly exempt A) devenv.exe, and B) my app.exe.
No help.
So then I disabled the Kaspersky anti-virus I recently installed.
No help.
So then I uninstalled the Kaspersky anti-virus I recently installed.
And the error vanished. VS2012 is happy again. Me too.
After trying everything, I did the obvious... I removed the remote debugging tools from my client (debuggee) and downloaded the matching debugging tools (2013 update 5) in my case, and installed those on the target. And beautiful debugging returned, what a sight! a red dot with a yellow flash in it, and... variables and stack to look at... I am in tears.
Try disable all vs extension.
I had this problem.And it turns out the PostSharp extension cause this problem.
I disable it and it works.

Office Setup Configuration

i need help to fix my visual basic 6.0. When vb6 start ups, It shows some Microsoft Offices Setup configuration that shows at everytime. If i cancel, I can continue the VB6, But some of component always shows this installation setup again. When I restart the VB Program, The setup configuration also shows everytime...
Any ideas to fix this? This really eat more times.
Vb6 apps have this quirk when some msi installer got its registry settings hosed. Have you run a regcleaner recently? Anyway the solution is usually to insert any CD that may be asked for (MS apps such as Office) and let it do its thing once then it usually never reoccurs. You may even have to to a repair install of the Office app concerned.

Visual Studio setup problem - 'A problem has been encountered while loading the setup components. Canceling setup.'

I've had a serious issue with my Visual Studio 2008 setup. I receive the ever-so-useful error 'A problem has been encountered while loading the setup components. Canceling setup.' whenever I try to uninstall, reinstall or repair Visual Studio 2008 (team system version). If I can't resolve this issue I have no choice but to completely wipe my computer and start again which will take all day long! I've recently received very strange errors when trying to build projects regarding components running out of memory (despite having ~2gb physical memory free at the time) which has rendered my current VS install useless.
Note I installed VS2005 shell version using the vs_setup.msi file in the SQL Server folder after I had installed VS2008, in order to gain access to the SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services designer in Business Intelligence Development Studio (this is inexplicably unavailable in VS2008).
Does anyone have any solutions to this problem?
P.S.: I know this isn't directly related to programming, however I feel this is appropriate to SO as it is directly related to my ability to program at all!
Note: A colleague found a solution to this problem, hopefully this should help others with this problem.
A colleague found this MS auto-uninstall tool which has successfully uninstalled VS2008 for me and saved me hours of work!!
Hopefully this might be useful to others. Doesn't speak highly of MS's faith in their usual VS maintenance tools that they have to provide this as well!
I had the same error message. For me it was happening because I was trying to run the installer from the DVD rather than running the installer from Add/Remove programs.
In my case, uninstalling from Add&Remove Programs didn't work. Instead, the problem was due to a recently hotfix installed through automatic updates. The hotfix to VS 2008 (in my case) has the number KB952241, so I uninstalled it using Add/Remove Programs checking on the show updates option. After it was unistalled the problem was gone.
I encountered the same problem and found a very easy solution.Go to the following Link:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vs2008/bb968856.aspx
and run VS AutoUninstall tool .This will automatically remove all the components of VS 2008.
Cheers
Sure enough, for me, it was the hotfixes. In Add/Remove Programs, check the "Show Updates" box, and remove ALL of the Hotfixes associated with your version of VS2008. Then try the "Change/Remove" button - it should now proceed without a hitch.
Well, it did for me, anyway... ;-)
I have Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition, and had to remove all updates and Hotfixes:
Update KB972221
Hotfix KB973674
Hotfix KB971091
Reboot, then the following Hotfix appeared, which I then removed as per #riaraos' answer:
Hotfix KB952241
Before the Change/Remove would work!
Hope that helps someone else.
Uninstall hotfixes installed in related to vs2008 and then try again.
It worked for me and hopefully it will for you as well.
Thanks,
Zelalem
Remove the following hot fixes and updates
Update KB972221
Hotfix KB973674
Hotfix KB971091
Restart the PC and try to uninstall now. This worked for me without problems.
Microsoft itself posted a KB article about this, and that article has a service pack that they claim fixes the problem. See below.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959417/
It took a while for the associated update to install itself, but once it did, I was able to run the Visual Studio setup successfully from the Add/Remove Programs control panel.
You should look for the MSI setup logs in the temp directory of your system. They will contain detailed inforamtion about why the setup failed.
I had a similar installation problem with Visual Studio 2008 which I was able to resolve by studying the logs.
I think this sort of question is entirely appropriate to the forum, especially if an easy solution can be found, as would save others hours of pain.
Unfortunately I dont have the solution, but would suggest (if you haven't already)
Run FileMon to see if the
installer is looking for specific
files which are no longer there -
this may give some clues.
Painful, but try uninstalling other apps based upon the VS shell (eg 2005) first.
Thanks, riaraos, uninstalling KB952241 was the solution for me, too. Before doing that I tried to run the installer from "Programs and Features" and from the installation DVD without success. I did not want to completely remove the VS 2008 installation but only add a few components.
Notes on my system:
Windows 7 Beta 1
Visual Studio 2008 SP1
Okay I had the same issues first my VS2008 was acting up so i tried to uninstall it and it didn't work...I read online that using an AutoUninstall by MS will do the trick it did just that , but left a lot of nasty files behind..
So i used "Windows Install Clean Up" and cleaned up more stuff that had to do with VS..
then went back into Add and remove in control panel Removed the KB952241...
then opened up Ccleaner and scanned the registry found a lot of left behind crap from VB2008 removed all that once that was done.
I went ahead and launch the installed back from the CD again and BAM its working.
I did all this without having to restart my PC..
Hope this helps people who are stuck..like i was
In my case, installing visual studio SP1 unbroke the uninstall/repair functionality.
Windows 7 suggested to "Uninstall using recommended settings" after hitting OK in the error message. It solved the problem.
Solution to this is
http://www.dotnetzone.gr/cs/forums/48758/ShowThread.aspx#48758

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